Copyright © 2003 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

From Web reports

On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Five years later, as he worked to build the “Poor People’s Campaign,” he was assassinated. After his death, civil rights leaders continued with the campaign, leading a mule train from Marks, Miss., to Washington, D.C. They established “Resurrection City,” a tent city on the National Mall. Without King’s leadership, however, the campaign fizzled.

This August, a group of people looked back 40 years and took up the banner of the Poor People’s Campaign to retrace the steps of King’s organization from that same small town in Mississippi to Washington, D.C.

Rain poured in Marks, Miss., for the kick-off of the Poor People’s March for Economic Human Rights on August 2, just as it did on the first day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign. But not even a flash-flood warning could dampen participants’ spirits at the opening ceremonies.

Over the next few weeks, the march zigzagged across the South, traveling to Batesville, Miss.; Nashville, Tenn.; Louisville and Frankfort, Ky.; Forsythe and Atlanta, Ga; Knoxville, Tenn.; Clinchco, Va.; Kannapolis and Durham, N.C.; Arlington, Va.; and Washington, D.C.

At each stop, marchers were welcomed by human rights and religious organizations. In the towns, participants heard presentations, held rallies and speak-outs and documented rights violations. They logged miles by day and slept in roadside pull-offs and parking lots at night. They marched on political offices and police stations. And their ranks swelled and shrank and swelled again.

Some officials refused to speak with them. Some, however, responded, including an aide to the governor of Kentucky, who agreed to personally address one person’s housing crisis, and the deputy mayor of Knoxville, Tenn., who listened to their concerns. Highlights of the multi-week march included:

• The march down Nashville’s Jefferson Street, where sit-ins for integration took place during the Civil Rights era.
• A visit to the Dr. King Memorial Center in Atlanta, after which marchers said they felt empowered.
• Hearing the history of Clinchco, Va., in songs and poems. Historically a coal-mining town, the town’s jobs disappeared as coal companies automated. The population has dwindled, and decent housing is in short supply.
• A change in the route to include Kannapolis, N.C., where Pillowtex plant employees lost their jobs when the company declared bankruptcy because low-wage labor outside the United States would produce the same goods more cheaply.
• Arriving in Arlington, Va., where the leadership of the march swelled to 100 as leaders of more than 30 organizations arrived in preparation for the march into Washington, D.C.
• Entering the nation’s capital on Aug 23. Marchers, whose numbers were estimated variously, joined a rally to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington. Then they began to build “Bushville” on the same site as the earlier “Resurrection City,” though the march permit was to run only 13 hours and expire at 11:59 p.m. As midnight came, those willing to risk arrest gathered in the tents. In the morning, police demolished Bushville and arrested 17 people who refused to leave. All were cited and released in a few hours.

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign had spent the month of August traveling from Mississippi to the nation’s capital. They listened to the poor and disenfranchised and documented the plight of the homeless and jobless as they marched.

Organizers have written about homelessness and joblessness, which they say have affected Americans in numbers not seen since the Great Depression. They say untold numbers live without the protection of health insurance, more have difficulty getting needed medications and basic care and that issues of economic human rights are not problems of scarcity, but crises of morality and political will.

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign claims to be led by those who are directly affected by policies that exacerbate these conditions. Its organizers plan to march on the Republican National Convention in 2004. For more information, visit the Web: http://www.kwru.org/march/index.html.